Monday, May 9, 2011

Deptford Church Street accident zone

Marmoset reported on 28 April about a van running off the southbound carriageway, damaging the pedestrian railings and the wall in front of Castell. Since then Castell House residents have witnessed two more accidents, one again on the southbound road involving a car and motorcyclist, the other on Saturday being a collision of two cars on the northbound road that ended up with one car stuck in the middle of the two carriageways.

It appears that none of these accidents have been caused by what one might consider to be the main hazard presenting drivers at the present time, which is the closure of Giffin Street. Drivers coming from Deptford High Street heading for Lewisham would normally drive down Giffin Street and turn right at Church Street. Now they are forced to turn into Frankham Street, whereupon they must turn left into Church Street. They are then doing a U-turn at the T-junction to get into the southbound lane. If it is not causing accidents, it is certainly causing hold-ups.

The following pix show two vehicles doing U-turns, the first of which doesn't quite make the turn and holds up southbound traffic while he backs up, straightens up and speeds off. The white van makes a tighter turn. Northbound traffic behind them in the farside lane would normally have to watch out for the nearside lane drivers who, if not turning left into Giffin Street will often try to undercut them to avoid the bus lane ahead of them. Now the farside lane are pulling out to undertake the U-turners.

What a flippin' mess. And all in aid of that nasty nickle-plated cheap-looking blinging blot on the landscape, the monstrous Deptford Lounge...(see Deptford Dame's latest post on that horrible building here).


 

We recently saw Lewisham's plans for the area in an architect's model on display at the Deptford station public consultation exhibition. It showed Giffin Square paved over across the high street end of Giffin Street, traffic presumably re-directed via Frankham Street, but er...no change to the junction arrangements at Deptford Church Street...

Paving stretches across the entrance to Giffin Street.

In this plan, the square closes off the road.

In this one, the central reservation of Deptford Church Street has been altered 
so that the junction is now at Frankham Street. 

It would appear then, that the newly paved Frankham Street is to become a busy main access route to Deptford High Street, not a quiet parking zone. (Note in the above plan the route of the bike path (green line), coming down Giffin Street and diverting north along Church Street and then east via Bronze Street – not then, running down through Crossfields, as has been proposed).

These plans have all come from the "Deptford Town Centre" page on Lewisham's website, where you can download the displays from their February 2010 exhibition. If anyone knows what's going to happen that actually makes any sense, please do tell.


2 comments:

  1. Texting from my Beamer...Monday, May 09, 2011

    There have never been any accidents on this stretch of road, just twatcidents.

    ReplyDelete
  2. As far as I recall Giffin st is not to be closed to traffic; the purpose of extending the paving across the road is to slow traffic down by visually blurring the boundaries between pedestrians and road traffic. In my opinion there will be no improvement in the traffic situation until the high street is either closed totally to traffic or made one way, although arguably the latter could turn it into even more of a racetrack at 7am.

    ReplyDelete